Strategy Program Manager

About AET

American Engineering Testing (AET) is a growing professional services firm specializing in geotechnical engineering, environmental consulting, materials testing, and construction observation. With offices across the Midwest and a talented team of engineers, scientists, and technical professionals, AET serves clients across infrastructure, commercial development, energy, and government sectors.

AET is at an inflection point. We are executing a multi-year enterprise transformation designed to take us from a strong regional firm to a scaled, high-performing organization: standardizing how we deliver work, building the systems and processes that support growth, and developing the leadership capabilities that will define AET for the next decade. This transformation is active and moving. We are looking for someone to help us run it with discipline and precision.

Job Summary

The Strategy Program Manager plays a critical role in executing AET's enterprise transformation program. This position is responsible for the governance, coordination, and execution discipline that keeps multiple interconnected strategic initiatives moving forward simultaneously, across multiple years. Working directly with the VP of Strategy and Growth and alongside AET's senior leadership team, the Strategy Program Manager translates strategic priorities into execution plans, holds initiative teams and sponsors accountable to milestones, surfaces and resolves the decisions that are blocking progress, and builds the organizational capability to manage complex programs effectively.

The ideal candidate is a highly adaptable, execution-focused professional with deep experience managing multi-initiative transformation programs in small to mid-sized organizations. They bring strong change management expertise, the ability to influence without authority, and the judgment to know when to escalate and when to resolve. This role requires both strategic thinking and operational discipline, the ability to frame an executive update in the morning and facilitate a cross-initiative coordination meeting in the afternoon.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities

Program Governance and Operating Rhythm

• Own the governance structure that keeps the transformation program running — cross-initiative coordination cadence, integrated program roadmap, dependency and risk tracking, and the governance calendar across all active initiatives
• Establish and maintain the governance structure with full accountability, cadences, reporting, and decision-making forums, that keeps AET's transformation initiatives on track
• Translate strategic priorities into clear, actionable execution plans with defined milestones, owners, and dependencies 
• Design and facilitate program meetings, prepare pre-work, follow through on decisions, and ensure the program maintains a consistent, reliable operating rhythm
• Facilitate cross-initiative coordination to resolve dependencies and conflicts between workstreams.
• Hold multiple workstreams progress simultaneously, track complex interdependencies, and maintain forward momentum across a long-horizon program
• Maintain and continuously update the RAID log and program dashboard

Initiative Project Management Support

• Build trusted working relationships with senior leaders across the organization, influencing outcomes without direct authority.
• Partner with business leads and executive sponsors who own each initiative helping them build realistic work plans, track against milestones, surface risks before they become crises, and drive decisions to closure on schedule
• Serve as the accountability and discipline layer across all initiatives, not as the project manager for any single workstream, but as the integrating force across all of them
• Define and deploy project management templates, standards, and operating rhythms that initiative teams use to run their work

Executive and Leadership Communications

• Prepare and deliver the monthly program update for the senior leadership team, maintain the integrated roadmap, and develop the materials that support executive decision-making
• Synthesize complexity into clear, concise narratives for senior audiences, ensuring the right people have the right information at the right time

Decision Support

• Prepare options papers, business case framing, and decision structures that enable leaders to make timely, well-informed decisions
• Track decisions and ensure follow-through after they are made
• Prepare leaders in advance for upcoming decisions and flag issues before they become blockers

Change Enablement Coordination

• Coordinate change management and communication activity across initiatives, ensuring change readiness planning, training timelines, and stakeholder engagement are integrated with execution milestones
• Partner with the communications function to ensure employees receive consistent, timely messages tied to initiative progress
• Contribute to a culture of accountability, transparency, and disciplined execution.

Capability Building

• Actively develop the project management and execution skills of the business leads and sponsors working alongside this role
• Treat every governance forum and planning session as an opportunity to build organizational capability, not just to coordinate

Strategic Planning Support

• Support the annual strategic planning process, translating confirmed priorities into execution plans, maintaining the multi-year roadmap, and managing future-phase work to ensure nothing falls through the cracks between planning cycles

Required Qualifications and Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in business, organizational development, engineering, or a related field, or equivalent experience
• 7 or more years of experience in program management, transformation management, or strategy execution
• Demonstrated experience managing complex, multi-workstream programs over multiple years in a small to mid-sized organization where success required building structure rather than inheriting it
• Demonstrated change management expertise including the ability to plan for and support adoption, not just delivery of operating model, process redesign, systems implementation, and culture change
• Comfortable adjusting quickly when priorities shift or new constraints emerge without losing momentum on the broader program along with demonstrated ability to create structure where it does not exist and make sound decisions with incomplete information
• Strong written and verbal communication skills with the ability to frame complex information clearly and concisely for senior audiences
• Exceptional ability to influence without formal authority, engaging effectively with senior leaders and cross-functional teams 
• Experience working effectively across a wide range of stakeholders, from front-line teams to senior executives, without direct authority over any of them
• Skilled at running productive meetings, surfacing real issues, and helping groups make decisions rather than talking around them
• Experience in the architecture, engineering, or construction industry is a plus but not required
• Ability to work on-site at AET's office in St. Paul, MN with potential, infrequent travel to regional office locations

 

Pay Transparency 

Base compensation is expected to be in the range of $95,000.00 and $130,000.00 annually based on skill set and experience. AET offers a comprehensive benefits package, including health benefits, insurance, Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP), long term savings, paid time off, and professional development opportunities. The selected candidate must be authorized to work for any employer in the U.S. without requiring visa sponsorship now or in the future. 

Work Environment

This job primarily operates in a professional office environment. This role routinely uses standard office equipment such as computers, phones, photocopiers, and filing cabinets. The position offers a hybrid work schedule in accordance with AET’s hybrid work policy, provided that daily responsibilities do not require onsite presence.

Physical Demands

The physical demands described here are representative of those that must be met by an employee to successfully perform the essential functions of this job. While performing the duties of this job, the employee is regularly required to talk and hear. The employee frequently is required to stand; walk; use hands or fingers, handle or feel; and reach with hands and arms. The employee is occasionally required to sit; climb or balance, and stoop, kneel, crouch, or crawl. The employee must frequently lift and/or move up to 10 pounds and occasionally lift and/or move up to 25 pounds. Specific vision abilities required by this job include close vision, distance vision, color vision, peripheral vision, depth perception, and ability to adjust focus.

Other Duties

Please note this job description is not designed to cover or contain a comprehensive listing of activities, duties, or responsibilities that are required of the employee for this job. Duties, responsibilities, and activities may change at any time with or without notice.